JACKSON  In the lead-up to this year's legislative session in Mississippi, supporters of a tougher gang law in the state talked a lot about the need to arrest white people. But in an ironic twist, the Jackson Free Press has learned that everyone arrested under the existing gang law from 2010 through 2017 were African American.

Over the last year, members of the Mississippi Association of Gang Investigators worked to spread the message that not all gang members in Mississippi are African American, Hispanic or another ethnicity. In fact, they warned, many of the state's toughest gang members are now white, between the growing Simon City Royals, white supremacist groups like the Aryan Brotherhood, and biker "clubs" such as the violent Bandidos, started by a white Marine in Texas in 1966 who would later be convicted of murder.

In August 2017, MAGI told The Clarion-Ledger that 53 percent of verified gang members, a number presumably pulled from the dozens of identified criminal groups in the state, are white. It is a potentially surprising statistic in the state with the highest proportion of African Americans in the nation and that experiences a large amount of media coverage of its black and Hispanic gangs.

MAGI's recent message was clear: The state's gang investigators are not fixated on black gangs and do not want the expanded gang law in order to profile young people of color. When asked to comment on the 53-percent-white report, Pascagoula District Attorney Tony Lawrence told the Jackson Free Press via email: "I have not seen that statistic and cannot comment on it, but I can say, in remembering gang cases in my office, I have prosecuted more white gang members for crimes than of any other race."

Prosecuting someone for a specific crime who happens to be a gang member and prosecuting someone, or adding on additional sentences, for being a member of a gang are two completely different things, however.

But despite MAGI frequently warning that white gang members pose a strong threat in today's Mississippi, the arrests and prosecutions under the existing street-gang law have only targeted African Americans, State Public Defender Andre de Gruy pointed out to the Jackson Free Press after the expanded gang law failed this session.

"From 2010 to 14 it was seldom used—fewer than 30 dispositions," de Gruy explained in an email. "The last two years of data indicate 32 indictments disposed of per year. These came from 5 of 22 districts but primarily from Forrest and DeSoto counties."

Mississippi's Administrative Office of the Courts uses the following racial/ethnic classifications: white, black, American Indian, Asian, Hispanic and unknown.

The State's 2017 gang-threat assessment found that 413 Simon City Royals had been in custody in DeSoto County last year, but that does not mean they were prosecuted under existing gang law. The assessment also pointed out that a Forrest County gang member, part of the 74 Hoover Crip Gang, was arrested in 2015 for capital murder and other felonies for killing two police officers. The Forrest County Corner said he died later that year in jail from heart disease. (Note: The assessment was found during the 2018 legislative session to have dramatically over-counted the number of gang members in Mississippi prisons.)

De Gruy, who opposed the expanded law due to both costs and the potential to profile people of color, says more information is needed to fully vet who the current gang law is already targeting. He would like more information about the dispositions under the existing law, including who was under 18 at the time of charge.

He also suggested that gang laws could use a way to check them for racial profiling. "[A] provision could be crafted to review the racial impact annually," de Gruy said.

On the Senate floor, the sponsor of this session's expanded gang bill, Senate Bill 2868, deflected concerns that expanded gang laws are used to profile Mississippians of color. ""It's not a Republican, Democrat(ic), black or white (issue)," Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, told black lawmakers during the debate.

* Author's note: The data provided by the Administrative Office of the Courts listed separate numbers for "remanded to the file" and "passed to the file," which I originally included separately above. Those mean the same thing, and I have edited the above story to reflect that and added links to explain the various dispositions. I also listed the race/ethnicity categories that the office uses to categorize after a question about it. Hispanics are not included in the "white" category.